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I am occasionally accused of being anti-things: anti-capitalist, anti-corporate,
and anti-globalization, mainly. If you’ve read Jennifer Government,
you may have an inkling why. But that’s a novel, not an essay. So I am
going to settle the burning issue: What Max is Anti-.

Let’s start with anti-corporate. People say this just because I wrote a book
in which Nike commits mass murder as a promotion for sneakers. The truth is,
I consider myself fairly pro-corporation. After all, I believe they should
be allowed to exist. I’m happy for them to manufacture things, and offer those
things to me in exchange for money. So long as they don’t externalize the true
costs of such manufacture—by, for example, dumping their waste in a
river—that’s totally fine. My only beef with corporations
is that they would clearly kill any one of us if there was a clean profit
in it, and they seem to be getting themselves into a
position to do just that.

Now apparently that makes me anti-corporate. Which I think is totally unfair;
after all, I can be pro-lawnmower even though I don’t want them running over
my feet. I don’t believe that corporations are evil. I don’t think they’re immoral.
They’re simply amoral: they have no capacity for ethical judgment.
Like a lawnmower,
they do what they’ve been designed for.

My attitude toward corporations doesn’t depend on whether they’re large
or small, chain or independent, foreign or local. It’s certainly true
that companies that serve the general public (like McDonald’s and Apple)
act nicer than companies that don’t (like Monsanto and Halliburton),
but this is no anomaly: it’s just further proof that corporations are only
interested in public opinion when it affects their bottom-line. Fundamentally,
all public companies are cast from the same mold. They are all machines,
running different programs on the same operating system.

This is not a particularly common view in these days when corporations appear
to us as grinning clowns and energetic bunnies. We are generally encouraged to view
them as real people, complete with emotions and personalities and quirky
senses of humor. To me this is the purest horseshit, and why I am never
surprised by scandals of companies caught behaving badly. They are not people,
and it isn’t cynicism to say so: it’s the plain truth.

(By the way, I suspect that the increasing personification of corporations
might turn out to be their Achilles’ heel. The more society buys into the
myth that companies are real people, the more we expect them to adhere
to human-like standards of ethical behavior. People like me would allow
corporations to get away with murder, because we expect nothing better.
It’s the people who get shocked when they discover that designer-label
clothing is manufactured for ten cents an hour by children in China who
cause trouble for a brand’s image and force companies to improve their
behavior.)

As for capitalism, I’m definitely pro- that. At least, I’m in favor of
the kind of regulated capitalism that clearly beats the pants off
any other economic system the world has come up with so far.
Capitalism has its pointy bits,
but it’s hard to argue with life-saving medicines, mobile phones, and
being able to buy a vintage Chewbacca figurine over the internet.
Now, I don’t think it’s
a smart idea to privatize water, or the government, or any other essential
service that isn’t subject to natural competition, but that doesn’t mean
I’m anti-capitalist. That means I’m not a zealot.

Somehow, the words “corporation” and “capitalism” have gotten mixed up:
the prevailing view is that corporations are champions of capitalism,
while anybody prone to waving a placard outside a Gap store must be against it
(and maybe even against *cough* *cough* freedom.) I don’t know how
anyone who’s actually worked for a corporation can believe this.
Companies are like the Soviet Union pre-1989: they’re centrally-managed,
they’re always trying to establish a monopoly, and there’s nothing they love more than a
little price-fixing. Sometimes they send people to lobby government,
but not for more competition: no, they want subsidies, special favors,
tax breaks, and
government assistance. So who’s the pinko? It’s corporations that are
anti-capitalist, not people like me.

Finally, globalization: I’m pro- that, too.
Its great potential benefit
is that as it erodes national boundaries, the privileges of rich nations
leak out to the poor. Today, the single greatest determinant of your
health, wealth, and general standard of living is which part of the Earth
you happened to be born in—something you had no say in, and can take no
credit for. There is currently some consternation in Western
nations
about jobs flowing offshore, to people who will work for less pay
(although this has been the case ever since I can remember, just
in different industries), but as far as I’m concerned, this is terrific.
As much as
it would suck to be made redundant from your call center because the work
is moving to India, that job is going to someone poorer than you, who
needs the work more than you, and who in unemployment faces more
serious consequences than having to cancel his World of Warcraft
subscription.
We are gradually coming to grips with the concept that people
shouldn’t be discriminated against for things they can’t control, and
thanks to globalization, this will eventually apply to people outside our
own national borders. It is an outrage that Western nations preach
free trade while blocking poorer countries from selling us their goods;
it perpetuates Third World poverty in order to protect First World jobs.
I’ll suck up a lot of lost Aussie culture and Planet Hollywood stores to get
rid of that.

But first, an update on the Syrup film situation. Here’s where we’re
at: Fortress liked my draft script, but wanted to hear more about my vision for the
last two thirds of the film. I said, “That sounds a bit like you want me to
sketch out the whole screenplay for no money,” and they said, “Well…” and
proceeded to flatter me until I agreed to do it. So right now I’m putting
the finishing touches on a draft structure for the film, on the understanding
that they’ll then decide (Donald Trump-style) whether I’m hired
or not. If they turn me down, we have agreed that I get to fly over to LA and
beat them to death.

But back to the headline story: finally, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston are
splitting up! I was thrilled to hear this, because finally that bit in Syrup
where Cindy’s goal is to marry Brad Pitt will make sense again. This has been
bugging me for years, and I’m really glad Brad (or I guess it was Jen) had the
decency to make things right.

Maybe everyone knew this already, but I just found out that those two originally
met on a blind date. I tell you what,
if a friend sets you up on a blind date with Brad Pitt or Jennifer Anniston,
you’d be fairly happy, wouldn’t you? I keep hearing these
dating horror stories; how come nobody ever tells the ones where their blind
date turned out to be one of the most desirable human beings on the planet?

Which, I reckon, was Brad and Jennifer’s problem. I mean, imagine you’re Brad
Pitt. Okay, I’ll give you a few moments. Now imagine waking up one
morning, perhaps after a particularly big night, and wandering to the bathroom.
You’re halfway there and you realize that Jen is looking at you from the bed.
You’re standing there, your hair all flat and stupid-looking, your eyes bloodshot,
caught in the middle of scratching yourself in that place where men scratch when nobody’s
around, and you can totally read Jen’s expression. It’s: “So this is the
world’s sexiest man.”

Okay, look, yes: I realize
some idiot
has auctioned his forehead for advertising space, and January is a slow month for the media
so they’re all
writing articles
about it. And yes, of course, some idiotic company is going to pay some idiotic amount
of money for it, and that’ll make news all over again. (If you haven’t
heard about this, here’s all you need to know: his mother is proud of him because
he’s “thinking outside the box.”) Haven’t we already established that the world is
engaged in a slow, hapless slide into corpocracy? Do we really need to celebrate
every milestone?